A quiet drink

[k-j]

He comes silently through my sash
(that's just like him -
slipping the net again).
He comes and I know it's him
after he's gone,
bold but never rash.

If it bleeds, we can kill it
(he doesn't know this -
I am like medicine to him).
If I wake and he hasn't been
I may even miss him,
oblivious in my billet.

That little buzzing boy who dates me
delinquently. Is it him
who leaves these bruises on my skin?
I'll ask him if I see him.
I think they may be love bites
(or else he really hates me).

[brianedwards]

Well, I never heard such affection expressed for a mosquito before!

(don't think you need the brackets)

Will be back.

B.

~

[Helen Bywater]

He comes silently through my sash
(that's just like him -
slipping the net again).
He comes and I know it's him
after he's gone,
bold but never rash.

If it bleeds, we can kill it
(he doesn't know this -
I am like medicine to him).
If I wake and he hasn't been
I may even miss him,
oblivious in my billet.

That little buzzing boy who dates me
delinquently. Is it him
who leaves these bruises on my skin?
I'll ask him if I see him.
I think they may be love bites
(or else he really hates me).

Hi k-j,

What a weird, quirky little poem. I like it. Great title, too. (I agree about the brackets.)

The idea of missing him, though - I find that rather implausible. I'm sure people can react differently to mosquito bites, but my experience, having spent much of my childhood in the tropics, was that the bites were very itchy and annoying until you became immune and didn't have any reaction to them at all.

I like "slipping the net" - the first hint at what it's about, although you don't realise it yet.

Helen

[BenJohnson]

Very nicely constructed, but as a mosquito hater I find it hard to sympathise Also not sure about the silently through my sash, a mosquito's whine it one of the most irritating sounds I know.

One other point which could be totally wrong, I'm sure I heard it is only the females that drink blood, since they need it for breeding. Trying to find confirmation though.

[thoke]

Good final stanza. The brackets work at the end at least. I suggest the following change to the line breaks:

That little buzzing boy who dates me
delinquently. Is it him who leaves
these bruises on my skin?
I'll ask him if I see him.
I think they may be love bites
(or else he really hates me).

Maybe change 'if' to 'when' as well.

The first stanza doesn't say very much, and I'm not sure I understand the second.

Ben

[ray miller]

Lovely, especially the last verse. Great rhymes."If it bleeds we can kill it" I didn't understand.

[bodkin]

Hi k-j,

I'm afraid I wouldn't have known it was about a mosquito if other critters hadn't already mentioned it.

Ian

[David]

It is a great title, and three sweet verses, very nicely measured and weighted.

Interesting rhyming too - abcbda? Where'd you get that from?

Cheers

David

[Helen Bywater]

Very nicely constructed, but as a mosquito hater I find it hard to sympathise Also not sure about the silently through my sash, a mosquito's whine it one of the most irritating sounds I know.

One other point which could be totally wrong, I'm sure I heard it is only the females that drink blood, since they need it for breeding. Trying to find confirmation though.

Wikipedia backs Ben up about it only being the female that drinks blood to provide protein for her eggs.

I'd forgotten about that whining noise they make, and yet I've seen them indoors, flying about silently. I wonder if the noise is a gender thing, too. It's easier to feed on an animal that can't hear you approach.

[El Wow!]

He comes silently through my sash
(that's just like him -
slipping the net again).
He comes and I know it's him
after he's gone,
bold but never rash.

If it bleeds, we can kill it
(he doesn't know this -
I am like medicine to him).
If I wake and he hasn't been
I may even miss him,
oblivious in my billet.

That little buzzing boy who dates me
delinquently. Is it him
who leaves these bruises on my skin?
I'll ask him if I see him.
I think they may be love bites
(or else he really hates me).

loved the whole idea here, sounds like loads of uncertainty...but beautifully put
El

[brianedwards]

K-J,
I just remembered a light-hearted poem I wrote a while back about the same subject:

MOSQUITO APOCALYPSE

I'm not tortured
by flashbacks of burning Vietnamese villages,
the screams of orphans, or
the thump of chopper blades.
I'm not taking neat slugs of Jack Daniels,
like the young Martin Sheen, but I am
sleepless and sweating in an Asian bedroom,
sipping tap water from a yellow mug.
My wife snores softly beside me,
as oblivious of the ensuing bloodbath
as Kurtz was of Marlowe's advance
up the Nung River.

I'm a pacifist,
and in peace-time, a gentle man,
but tonight I will not sleep
until my hands, like Wagnerian cymbals,
have clapped the sweet music
of my revenge;
a sonic climax befitting
Walter Murch's claustrophobic sound design,
with its brush of tangled sheets,
singing locusts and
admittedly cliched ticking wall clock.

The bloodsucker circles
somewhere in the dark heart of this room,
its hum dragging my eyes left and right
across the silver screen of my vision
and any minute now
my wife will wake up and ask me
what the hell I'm doing at 4am,
in full combat fatigue
and camouflage face paint.





B.

~

[k-j]

Thanks for all your thoughts.

I was probably being silly with "if it bleeds, we can kill it". It's a quote from the movie "Predator". I've always liked it though.

I had heard that it was the females who vant to suck your blud. But used a bit of license here because I want the voice to be female, the mozzer her odious cassanova.

David, thanks for noticing the scheme. Did you like how I inverted the middle four lines in S2, for abcdca?

I don't know how the noise thing works. As Helen says, they're silent when the move in for the kill. I wonder if the buzzing isn't just to annoy / scare you, to make the blood come to the skin.

Brian - ha! Thanks for posting that. I love the hands clapping the sweet music of your revenge. I'm a compulsive handclapper when mozzers, or even midges, are near.

[Lovely]

Well constructed.

Like it's momentos flowing melody heart-beats and sounds and all.


Also touched upon the way he might of felt about You?

"I may even miss him, oblivious to my billet"..

you expressed it nicely

l